QSFer Halo Scot has a new lesbian sci-fi romance out (bi, gay, lesbian, neurodivergent): The Heartbeat of a Million Dreams.
You are the voice for those who have none.
You are the heartbeat of a million dreams.
Mars has a shadow, a mirror world torn from the chaos of an eons-old rivalry between gods and titans. An elite few protect this secret to preserve the peace. But when a girl comes along with the power to reunite Mars, worlds collide in cosmic war.
Slade Hawk is a monster. That’s what they tell her, at least. Hunted since birth, she’s lived her life in dumpsters, subways, and in-between places. She’s a ghost to most, a forgettable blur. Some call her a wolf, a leader of the pack, the bridge between worlds, but she can barely survive each day.
She is one of the evolved humans, a starchild who can shift between matter and energy at will—though her power stretches farther and reaches darker. Earth fears her people and exiles them to Mars. They want her dead, want Mars to burn, and fear can shape fate, can erase the brightest stars. Slade must overcome horrific odds to conquer Earth’s cruelty and free Mars from war.
Are you a moment?
Or are you infinity?
Will anyone remember your name?
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Excerpt
1
Infinity’s Sorrow
SLADE
I’m not supposed to exist.
That’s what I’ve gleaned from over two decades of running. I’m an error, a fluke, a mistake, a monster. Something about me is wrong. But I don’t know what. I don’t know how. I don’t know why they’ve chased me since birth. All I know is they want to kill me. Or if not kill me, trap me. I scare them. I’m dangerous . . . apparently. Though I don’t know who—or what—I am. Just that I’m a horror large enough to excuse infanticide.
That’s what they tried. The ruthless ones. My trackers. My hunters. My nightmares. In the hospital, they slit my throat—my tiny, wobbly, infant throat. I still boast the scar from where the doctor sewed me back together. She saved my life that day and on so many days after.
I don’t know her name. She won’t share it, for her family’s sake. She knows mine, though. Everyone does. It’s printed on every billboard in every block of the city. Slade Hawk: WANTED. The only gift my parents gave me: a strong name, a superhero name, a name that damned me till streets claimed my salvation.
Only at the end do you recall the beginning with fondness. In the moment, it’s a cage, but in retrospect, it’s a sanctuary. Nostalgia’s a vile drug, a wicked poison, an insidious parasite that feasts upon memory’s charismatic lure. I remember music first. A nursery rhyme filtering through filmy windows, a half-remembered melody, a hearkening of roses. Someone used to sing to me while I hid in dumpsters. Her aria cut through the thick scent of decay and made me forget that I, too, was trash. Harmony elevates demons to lofty ideals.
Lofty. There’s my antithesis. All that waits for me above this cursed city’s scribbled skyline is pain. They caught me once, those sadistic skyships with their corrupt justice, and unraveled me to infancy, to my first scrape with hell—death at birth, an oxymoronic paradox. No, best stick to the starforsaken subway and the underworld’s vapid ignorance. Shadows help me fade.
Though shadows are harder to come by these days, and spotlights are even more bloodthirsty. “The Reckoning,” that’s what pensioners call it, souls who can still afford hope. The rest of us call it massacre—or genocide, if you’re fancy. Whatever the reason, rebellion brews on the horizon, and in rebellion’s wake, regret often follows.
A man brushes past me. I freeze. Explode. Synapses fire in artillery, and thoughts confetti as infantry. I breathe, count, stim, hum, but nothing re-centers my Fabergé-egg mind.
“Lady, you’re blocking the doors.”
A voice. Too loud. Too harsh. Too cruel. Too much. The Big Bang stirs inside my skull, and my universe readies to detonate.
“Move.”
The same voice, accompanied by a hand. He waves in front of my face as if I’m a ghost. Again, too much. Too cruel. Too harsh. Too bright. I squeeze shut my eyes and strain to order my shotgun-blast thoughts.
“You can’t just stand there. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Every word is a bomb, and his anger slivers deep. I try to explain, to plead for mercy, but he huffs and leaves before I become human again.
A hand grabs my arm and tosses me into a corner, away from the oncoming train. Aggression destroys me, missiles through my psyche, and I curl in on myself, a fetus once more with no warmth from the womb. This world isn’t built for me, and I’m not built for this world. My suffering lasts but a moment, yet it feels like infinity.
Are you a moment? Or are you infinity?
Because one day, you will die. One day, no one will remember your name. One day, the universe will forget your face, voice, hopes, dreams. Then what do you live for, when life is lost? What is the meaning of a voided existence?
Do you create echoes, ripples in time, impulses and emotions that string together generations? Or do you make your moment shine like a star, then hope it travels far and reaches eyes blurred by tears on a cold, dark, winter night? Do you pray your star lasts after you’re gone, a ghost traveler, a reminder of what once was yet will never be again?
So I ask again: Are you a moment? Or are you infinity?
Is infinity a moment lost long ago that outshines the rest, but fades in the end, too? Or is the end a moment? Infinity? Destiny? Fate harvested from heartstrings to answer whys and hows? Does fear shape fate? Does dread paint destiny? Do we mold our own monsters from murder and myth? Does it matter? Do you matter? Or are you the only thing that does? Do these moments, these infinities, capture meaning from madness, a kiss on a balcony, a laugh on a train? Does love immortalize life in the transcendent metropolis of a trillion, selfless vows?
I don’t know. No one does, despite fractured prisms of false promises and shredded hope. But what I do know—after a lifetime hated, feared, revered, destroyed—is that love renders life bearable, worthwhile . . . and its loss carves answers from pain.
Because you will love. You will lose. You will live. You will die. But you must endure mortality’s ultimatum, or this gift will squander beneath terror. Fear of death wastes life.
But the moment passes. Infinity, too.
And in the subway’s corner, inside my virtual womb, I pray away brokenness, jagged ends, shattered wine glasses leaking blood. I wish I were another girl. A fierce girl. A fiery girl. Fearless and ruthless, brimming with rage. The world forces her hand, her cruelty, her power, and when life damages her, she replies in kind.
Author Bio
Halo Scot is the author of I WILL KILL YOU, a psychological thriller, THE HEARTBEAT OF A MILLION DREAMS, a science-fantasy novella, and the RIFT CYCLE, a grimdark series. Reviews and press are available on HaloScot.com. Halo has appeared in Publishers Weekly’s Indie Spotlight and, as a founding member of QueerIndie.com, in Pop Pride Week, an event hosted by ReedPop, BookCon, and New York Comic Con.
| Author Website | https://haloscot.com/ |
| Author Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/authorhaloscot/ |
| Author Twitter | https://twitter.com/halo_scot |
Thanks millions, Queer Sci Fi Team!